


On That One Spot of Earth

by regshoe



Category: Flight of the Heron - D. K. Broster
Genre: Botany, Growing Old Together, M/M, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:21:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28114578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/regshoe/pseuds/regshoe
Summary: Keith Windham reflects on the surroundings and occupations of a peaceful retirement.
Relationships: Ewen Cameron/Keith Windham
Comments: 20
Kudos: 15
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	On That One Spot of Earth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Luzula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luzula/gifts).



> This takes place in an unspecified fix-it AU in which Keith survives the ending of the book and he and Ewen live happily ever after. :)
> 
> Thanks very much to Garonne for beta reading!

_Ardroy  
1st July 1784_

_My dear Francis,_

_I trust this Letter finds you and Lady Stowe as well as it leaves us. We have been very quiet here since your going..._

A sudden, sharp ray of sunlight fell across the writing-desk, glinting across the titles of the books stacked under the windowsill and on the fresh ink of Colonel Keith Windham's letter. He glanced upwards: beyond the window, which stood open to let in the summer air, the day had been grey, but now the clouds were breaking up into those quick alterations of light and shade which were so characteristic of this place. The sunlight, fickle yet, left the paper in a few moments; but out upon Loch na h-Iolaire it still danced.

Smiling slightly, Keith watched the light upon the water. Indeed, they had been very quiet here of late, but he was not lacking in things to tell his brother and sister-in-law about. He had been living at Ardroy now for almost a year—ever since, after the late war in America had ended (in defeat for the British, and not very gloriously for his own regiment, though he himself had achieved some little credit for his actions), he had decided that it was time at last to leave that life behind him, and resigned his commission. It might have been an uncomfortable change. Ambition had always been one of his foremost characteristics, and there could have been some question what a man like the younger Keith Windham was to do when, his ambitions achieved (his old hopes of advancement had been amply fulfilled; he had been colonel of the regiment for the last eighteen years), he quitted the field upon which he had spent so much of his energies. But it was not so. He did not regret the change; for all that he was still proud of the past, this present—so different from it—was a fitting reward.

It was (he thought, returning to his letter) fortuitous indeed that he was established here. This country seemed to hold an inexplicable attraction for his family; Francis and Georgina generally spent part of the year—as much time as they could spare from the Earl of Stowe's duties in Parliament and upon his English estates—in Scotland, near where her family had lived when they had first met, and the position made visits back and forth with them quite easy. Really, things had fallen out remarkably well for them all.

_I enclose the Receipt for that Pear-Pudding, which our Cook has kindly copied out for you, since you admired it so much! I trust you shall make good use of what she assures us is a great and solemn Secret._

_Your loving brother,  
Keith_

Keith laid down the pen and sat back in his chair, glancing comfortably round him. It was a dear, familiar room. How often of old had he and Ewen sat together by that fireside talking the length of a Highland summer's evening out to its grey, dusky midnight... but those days, when his only time spent here had been on too-brief visits, were over. For many years Ardroy had been a constant in a life of which the chief scenes were always changing—from Flanders, to London, then further to Nova Scotia, the garrison at Minorca, and lately the West Indies. Now its constancy was rewarded... He had not always thought so fondly of the Highlands, it was true; but there was so much of Ewen here, visible even from this narrow window—there the larches and pines that he had planted, there the fields he had helped to lay out and in which the tenants grew crops to which he, ever striving after ways of improving their welfare, had introduced them; and above them the heather-covered slopes over which he and Keith had roamed together, the loch upon which they had fished in the rowing-boat, the hilltops and sheltered corries where, alone with the bright cold air and the high song of the larks, they had done other things... With all these associations and memories before him, he must love the place also. 

Even in this little room, which he shared with Ewen as a study, there were the fishing-rods upon the wall, the botanical books left lying on the desk and the cabinets of pressed flowers—for Ewen had been occupying himself with this hobby of botanising for many years, and had built up quite a collection. And, though Keith had not been able to make much of the long lists of Latin names written out by that Swedish fellow of whom Ewen thought so highly, nor of the collection of treatises upon agricultural improvements, moss anatomy and such subjects which Ewen had assembled in his library, he had found a certain charm in appreciating the flora of Ardroy alongside him. In fact—Keith took up his finished letter, folded, addressed and sealed it—the next task he had planned for this morning had to do with just that. 

He was getting out the materials he needed for this work when a well-known step sounded in the hall outside, and the study door opened.

'Keith, there you are,' said Ewen. 'I was looking for you... what are you doing?'

Ewen's hair no longer had the brilliant colour of his younger days, but his eyes were as deeply blue as ever—more so for the contrast, Keith sometimes thought—and the expression which came into them every time he looked at Keith was utterly undimmed by time. Keith rose from his chair, went over to him and kissed him.

'I was writing to Francis,' he said, after a few moments. 'And then,' he continued, disengaging himself from Ewen's arms and returning to the windowsill above his writing-desk, 'I was contemplating beginning work on something which I found on my walk this morning.' He took from the windowsill a glass, with a little water in it, and showed its contents to Ewen.

Ewen's eyes lit up at the sight. He drew out one of the tiny pink flowers, pulling it from the tangle of soft, thread-like leaves, and turned it over in his fingers. 'The first flowers this year—and you found them before I did! Where were they—in that patch by the track up to Slochd nan Eun, I suppose? That is where I have known them to flower before.'

'The very place,' said Keith. 'I almost mistook the leaves for one of your mosses at first; but there was quite a carpet of the flowers, covering the ground behind a boulder—a very pleasing sight. In fact I made a sketch of them in place, before I disturbed any of them; I shall show you,' he said, retrieving his coat from the back of his chair and pulling out a folded piece of paper from one of its pockets.

The rough pencil sketch showed the brilliant patch of flowers—they were _coirean-còinnich_ in the Gaelic, or _Silene acaulis_ in Linnaeus's Latin—crowding in summer glory over the ground between the rocks, with the faint outline of Meall a' Choire Ghlais rising in the distance behind them.

'I was just about to begin on the detailed drawings,' Keith continued, 'when you so rudely interrupted me.'

Ewen laughed. 'For that I must apologise,' he said, 'though your sketch is already very lovely. You know, I think you ought to do more of the illustrations like this—show the plants in their own places, as they looked in life. 'Tis a happier way than only drawing them on their own, I think, though you must lose some of the detail.'

For Keith's sketches were not only done for his own pleasure, but were his contribution to a joint undertaking which had grown out of Ewen's scientific hobby. Not naturally a great intellectual, Ewen had taken to botany out of his simple love for the land, and also out of his keen interest in improving it for the betterment of his people's lives—by studying nature, so he said, we may understand what we can gain from making use of the bounty with which God provides us. The potatoes, turnips and other more experimental crops growing in the fields outside were sufficient testament to this industrious ambition. He happily spent hours out upon the hills collecting and classifying plants, and in this very study reading scientific books (and Keith had once been so surprised that he could read Latin!) and corresponding with botanist friends in other parts of the world. Now he was putting together—for his own amusement, to make a record for the future of his own land and, perhaps, if there were a public for such a narrow and unscientific piece of botanical work, for publication—a little account of the flora of Ardroy, and Keith was illustrating it. It was a fine way of keeping up the artistic skills which he had once used to make sketches of military plans and to record in his journal the observations he made while on campaign.

'Yes, I should like to,' said Keith now, nodding. 'There's more interest in it. Though I confess I may not be able to differentiate the dozens of different kinds of moss or lichen, when they are all growing together beneath the pines. We shall have to rethink the method, if you wish to include them.'

Ewen grinned. Mosses had been a particular interest of his lately, though he had not yet succeeded in persuading Keith of their appeal. The Western Highlands being a peculiarly rich region for this class of plants, they were, according to him, a worthy object of study. The author of the Latin book which stood upon the writing-desk—he was a doctor at Leipzig, and his book a detailed and wonderfully illustrated account of the natural history of mosses—had greatly appreciated the specimens which Ewen had sent him, and Ewen was happy to contribute in this modest way to the advancement of the science.

He had kept up some other correspondences, too, in these late years. There was yet living at Florence, Keith was aware, a certain gentleman—no longer young—and there were those in Scotland who still took an interest in his fortunes. Of late he and Ewen had not often spoken of such things at any great length. The horrible significance of their political differences when they first met had given way, in the few years following, to a less fraught, if still delicate, state of affairs, and to long discussions through which they had sought more than anything else simply to understand each other better. But for a long time now there had been little more to say on the subject. It seemed to Keith that the urgency, if not the ardour, of Ewen's Jacobitism had faded over time—more especially after his cousin Archibald Cameron had met his terrible fate—but his essential loyalties were unchanged. Well, it was all a long time ago now, and there had been no third Pretender; it did not trouble them much these days...

'Oh, never fear. I shall show you how to distinguish them,' said Ewen, his blue eyes twinkling.

'I shall look forward to it,' said Keith gravely. He replaced the _coirean_ flowers in their glass on the windowsill, where the fickle sun at once caught and glittered on the little depth of water, painting a miniature of its own more dramatic efforts out on the loch, and the bright pink petals upon their bed of green leaves looked like a tiny prefigurement of the heather which in a few weeks would cover in its full glory the dark hills beyond.

'Now, I remember why I was looking for you,' said Ewen. 'It looks so lovely today out there, does it not?—I thought we might go out upon the loch in the rowing-boat. We could row out to the island and spend the afternoon there. What say you?'

Keith smiled. 'That sounds an excellent plan,' he said. 'Lovely it is; but this Highland sun can be so unreliable—I think we had better make the most of it while it lasts. My botanical illustrations shall have to wait until later.'

But Ewen was happy to agree to this. He lingered in the room long enough to kiss Keith once more, and then they went together out into the sunlight.

**Author's Note:**

> Carl Linnaeus was interested both in studying and classifying plants and in schemes for economic improvement based on knowledge of nature. With Ewen's great love for the land and the interest he takes in managing his estate, I thought both of these would appeal to him—as well as Linnaeus's handbooks on getting into botany, which were popular with amateurs across Europe. Although Ewen's plans for planting potatoes and larches at Ardroy are a bit more realistic than Linnaeus's ideas about growing tea and tropical spices in Sweden...
> 
> The 'doctor at Leipzig' is Johann Hedwig, and Ewen has been reading his _Fundamentum historiae naturalis muscorum frondosorum_ , published in 1782, which has some really lovely illustrations. Hedwig was the first to elucidate many of the details of moss anatomy and reproduction, as well as classifying mosses. I thought he might appreciate having a correspondent from such a bryophyte-rich place as Lochaber!


End file.
